Ottawa hockey fans know the feeling: your team is mathematically out of the playoffs, the season winds down, and the games start to feel a little… meaningless. But in the Professional Women's Hockey League, no game is ever truly meaningless — and that's entirely by design.
What Is the Gold Plan?
When the PWHL launched in 2024, it introduced a draft lottery system unlike anything in professional hockey. Called the Gold Plan, it works like this: once a team is eliminated from playoff contention, every win it earns for the rest of the season translates into draft order points. The more you win after elimination, the better your shot at landing the top pick in the entry draft.
It's a direct counter to "tanking" — the practice of losing games intentionally late in the season to secure a higher draft pick. In leagues like the NHL, tanking has become a controversial but widely-used strategy. The PWHL decided from day one it wasn't going to let that culture take root.
Why It Matters for Ottawa
Ottawa's PWHL franchise has been building its identity as one of the league's most competitive teams, and fan engagement has grown steadily since the league's debut. For local fans packing arenas or watching on TSN, the Gold Plan means every late-season game carries real stakes — even when the standings don't look pretty.
Under this system, a struggling Ottawa squad isn't just playing out the string. It's competing for draft capital that could shape the roster for years to come. That's meaningful for a franchise still in its early years, where young talent acquisition through the draft is a core part of long-term planning.
A Model Other Leagues Might Envy
The Gold Plan is drawing attention from sports analysts and executives across North America as a potential template for eliminating tanking incentives altogether. Rather than punishing losing teams with better picks — which inadvertently rewards losing — the PWHL rewards teams that keep competing.
It also makes the fan experience better. Nobody pays for a ticket hoping to watch their team lose. With the Gold Plan in place, coaches and players have every reason to push hard through the final whistle of the final regular-season game, no matter where they sit in the standings.
The Bigger Picture for Women's Hockey
The PWHL has been deliberate about building a league culture that's competitive, fair, and fan-first from the ground up. The Gold Plan is one piece of that — alongside revenue sharing, minimum salary standards, and a commitment to player welfare that sets the league apart.
For Ottawa, a city that's embraced women's hockey with real enthusiasm, it's another reason to stay invested deep into March and April, regardless of where the team lands in the standings.
The message from the PWHL is clear: play hard, play to win, and the draft will take care of itself. It's a philosophy Ottawa fans — and players — can get behind.
Source: CBC Sports via CBC Ottawa RSS feed
